


Cherish

by maximum_overboner



Category: Original Work
Genre: Emotional Abuse, Gen, Original Characters - Freeform, Original work - Freeform, Other, deranged psychopath merrily gallivants about, trying something a little different!, very dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 17:44:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11605671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximum_overboner/pseuds/maximum_overboner
Summary: It's always nice to be needed.





	Cherish

**Author's Note:**

> if you're subscribed to my profile, this might seem slightly unusual! i just thought i would try something a bit different. i hope you enjoy it!

Amber is as tall as her sister is dead. Extremely.

She called me when it happened. All tears and snot, I could hear it down the receiver like it was collecting in her throat. A car crash, speeding driver, bits of things everywhere.

“Oh,” I said, having only met her sister twice. “That sucks.”

She cried harder, then hung up. I called back, unsure of what I should be doing. I apologised for whatever it was I said. I told her I was coming around to comfort her. She said it was a good idea. Plans ruined, I went.

She was sat outside, in the garden. I think she was pulling weeds when she got the call herself. She said something, but I didn’t hear.

“What?”

“I’m sorry for getting mad at you, Ethan.”

“Thanks for apologising,” I said, feeling better. Half the garden was still to be weeded.

She sat there still, in the dark, pale and lanky. Looked like a folded up deck chair. She better not look like this at the wedding. She pressed her hands to her face until her voice was warbling.

“Can-- Can I get a hug--”

I handed her one. She took it eagerly, smashing her head into the crook of my neck and pulling around my chest like she was trying to pop my lungs. She stayed like that for ten minutes, wailing like an alley cat in heat. I stayed there as well because that’s what a hug is. I thought about the things I should be saying to get her to stop.

“I really-- I really need you right now, thanks for--”

I discarded all thoughts of discouraging her. I rubbed her shoulder, back and forth, back and forth.

“There there,” I said, “there there.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

I found out her name, but I can’t remember it. I think it’s Jane? It starts with a J. Anyway, the paramedics got out their shovels, scooped up what they could find of Janet, dumped her into a coffin and fired her at Mach five into the crematorium so now she’s sitting on the shelf judging me. Fuck you, Jean. You can’t beat me. I’m alive. And I have a vacuum cleaner so don’t push it you dusty tart.

Amber came back from work, in tears again. I dropped everything to be with her. I scooped up this frail, pathetic thing in my arms and kissed the tears away.

“You’ve been so understanding,” she murmured. “Thank you so much.”

“Anything,” I said. "Don’t push yourself to ‘get over it’. These things take time.”

She chuckled darkly.

“The way I’m feeling it might take the rest of my life.”

My heart skipped a beat at the prospect.

 

 

* * *

 

Boy did Jenny have a lot of bullshit. Origami, craft projects, paintings. Every time Amber passes it in the hall she cocks her head and gets wistful, tearing up at least.

“She was so creative. Ever since she was little, she was always painting. Once, when I was four, I got so jealous of her that I took my pot of paint and just dumped it on her picture.”

There goes the lip again.

“Isn’t that silly? I still feel bad, even though I don’t remember it.”

Yeah.

“Nah, not at all. This is hard for you.”

“It is,” she said. It was a landscape, the visual equivalent of eating dry sand.

“What do you think of it?”

“Of what?”

“The painting.”

How can somebody paint every day for twenty years and not get good at it? That’s miraculous. Scientists should be cloning those ashes and studying her.

“I love it.”

Amber looked relieved, probably.

 

* * *

 

She’s been coping well. We get up, I make breakfast, she gives me a smooch and then we head off to work. We get back, think of something to do, a movie, sex, maybe we head out, then we come back and do whatever. Jill’s stuff is still littered about the house and she looks at it sometimes, but in that weird, resolute sadness rather than the sobbing.

During my lunch break I drove back, took an origami crane from the front room, took it outside and then set it on fire. I got a sandwich (though they didn’t have the one I wanted again, it’s not a meal deal if you don’t like prawn salad, it’s robbery), went back to work and ate it with Rob. Never liked Rob. He’s like a walking divorce, it’s all he ever talks about. For God’s sakes, I get it, you can’t see your kids, Christ. I’m trying to choke back my lunch. Got another call from her an hour before I clocked off, crying about how she can’t find that paper crane. She asked me if I moved it when I did the dusting.

“No,” I said, “not at all, I know how much that means to you.”

She broke down further. All wet and pulpy.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry, but I-- I don’t know what happened to it--”

“Did you lose it?”

She was quiet.

“I don’t think I did.”

“You like to walk around the house with it, right? Did you leave it in a different room?”

“No, I-- I looked everywhere.”

“Maybe it’s somewhere weird. Remember that time I put the milk in the freezer?”

“Yeah.”

Sniffling.

“I’ll be right back, don’t worry.”

“Thanks.”

Left work an hour early, result. There she was, sat in the garden again like a clinically depressed sunflower.

“I looked everywhere, I-- I don’t--”

I pulled her into another hug. I thought to Jude’s knitting needles in the bedroom, to her homemade candles in the hall and that terrible painting. The painting would be hard to get away with, but I could think about that later.


End file.
